More and more versatile and demanding user applications are designed for electronic devices nowadays. A mobile station, for instance, is no longer used merely for speaking, but also as a camera, a calendar, an Internet browser or a game device, for example. Such numerous new multimedia and other applications require improved performance, and particularly greater memory capacity and lower energy consumption.
The memory components in electronic devices are significant for the performance and energy consumption of the whole electronic device. The problem in DRAM memory components (Dynamic Random Access Memory) according to the prior art is particularly their great energy consumption, which is at least partly due to the refresh functionality of the DRAM memory circuit, i.e. recharging the capacitor periodically. The problem in SRAM memory components (Static Random Access Memory) is, in turn, their large physical size and high price. Integrating memory components according to the prior art into portable electronic devices, such as mobile stations, is thus difficult due to the great energy consumption and physical size of the memory components. In addition, problems are caused by disappearance of the data stored in DRAM and SRAM memory components when the power supply stops, synchronization between different memory components and corruption of files and file systems.
With the solution known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,485 (Ban), data can be written continuously in such physical memory locations of a memory component in which nothing has been written yet. The problem in this solution is, however, that the contents of the memory component are not checked in any way, but the method only concentrates on studying the state of the memory component, in other words whether something has been written in the memory component or whether the contents of the memory component have been cleared, for example.